December 2012 - The New Year 2013

After reading this post (if you even make it through to the end), you will see why I have been MIA for the last month. I don't know how we even fit it all in! AND... if you are looking to visit Australia, this is a good post to start thinking about what you want to do while you're here.

My sister has come and gone. It was the quickest month of my life! We are all so sad to see her go home and hope she will make it back out soon (whether for school/work, or just to see us). :) We had a packed month with her here along with the holidays. I was looking over our December calendar and here was Kiley's Australian "DID" list:

• 1st thing on the list that I'm sure was "unforgettable" (sarcasm) was that we had our 6 month home inspection which I have been told is a government law here for renters. Everything inside and out has to be in tip-top condition and then one of the real estate agents from the property management company comes out and inspects everything. Kiley made it the week before inspection and was extremely helpful in cleaning and doing yard work. Maybe she can come back again when we have our inspection in June. ;)
• Right away we had her come to our Relief Society Christmas party to meet the wonderful women in our ward whom I love so much!
The photos were taken and put together by a member of our RS.
• Another ward Christmas party which was opened up with a solo performance by muahh singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"...
• Kiley was most helpful for the 3 or 4 photo shoots I did during her stay! And, she got to see some of the cool parks here when we did them (such as Commonwealth Park).
• Kiley helped me make lots of cookies for a cookie exchange party we went to (I love my Utah friend, Natalie, who held it). I don't think it is common to have those types of party's here. Especially because it's hot and not fun to cook when you have no a/c.
• Kiley got to go visiting teaching with me and was able to chat with the wonderful ladies I get the pleasure of seeing regularly and even got a special gift from one of them who is from Papua New Guinea. She makes string bags and sells them at the market each week and made one for both Kiley and I. They are awesome!You can see a picture of Kiley's string bag in the Sydney Opera House pic's below.
• AND - - - We had movie night just about EVERY night with popcorn. FUN! Some movies on our list...
1. VAMPIRE DIARIES (a.k.a. "V.D." and not in the gross way) - We waited 3 months to watch the season while we waited for Kiley to come. We used to watch it every week together, so we waited and let the suspense build up. We had seven or eight episodes to watch and are patiently waiting the next one to come out 48 hours from now (but who's counting?)
2. Modern Family = Hilarious!
3. Big Bang Theory (I think Teagan is Sheldon!)
4. Grease
5. The Breakfast Club
6. It's A Wonderful Life - 1st time for kiley to see it!
7. Pitch Perfect - This one came on a little too often at our house over the month. Not to mention that I wasn't sure if Kiley had brought any other music on her phone besides the soundtrack to this movie for the entire month.
8. Lots of other Christmas movies
9. And lastly... Kiley was nice enough to stay home one night with the boys while Jeremy and I enjoyed a night out to see The Hobbit. (not sure if I followed the story line, but it was good enough to watch.)
• Now to some of the more adventurous items - - - Cockington Green Gardens. Always a favorite of mine.
• The Royal Australian Mint
• Questacon
• Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. This is where Kiley took our family photo for our Christmas card that never got mailed out (he he) and where we saw koala's, kangaroos, emu's, and wallaby's out walking around in the wild. It is really cool!
• NASA Satellite Station. The largest and I believe the only one in the southern hemisphere. It is the satellite that received the first images of the last rover that went into space.
• Black Mountain/Telstra Tower.
• Jamberoo Waterpark = Coolest water park EVER!
• Canberra International Zoo & Aquarium = 1st time Kiley has seen a real shark in person.
• Bateman's Bay = 1st time HOLDING a jelly fish. (Yes, I held it from the top part and no one got stung)
• John Knight Memorial Park
• The Kangaroo Field
• Mt. Ainslie Lookout
• Australian War Memorial
• Capital/ Parliament House
• The Aboriginal Embassy (he he)
• Canberra Center for Christmas in the City & New Year's - They had all sorts of fun stuff going on that was free for the kids: camel rides, trampoline's, bumper cars, you name it. We went to see the camels, and waited an hour in line after they told us we would FOR SURE make it on before they took a break, and when it was our turn to get on the camel they said, "Sorry, the camels have to go see someone right now." What the? Grrrrrr!!!
• Teagan's Angry Bird Birthday Party: Listen to his wish and comment at the end. Then I added a video from Jeremy's phone that I found that Teagan made. lol He was video taping the cake that Jared and Hisa brought him.
• Holidays, Holiday, Holidays
• Cookies Galore = We baked and delivered over 300 cookies!!!
• Buying/Wrapping presents because Tate couldn't leave anything alone for 3 seconds with out unwrapping it, meaning it all had to be done the night before.
• Santa Came to our house! (see pics below - check back for video after I get Jer to figure out how to download it as a file so I can keep it)
• Christmas Eve = Dinner at our Utah friend's family, the Field Home. Played Christmas games and ate lots of food, laughed and exhausted our children out for the night.
• Christmas Day = Had the missionaries over for breakfast, went to a Christmas morning service at the chapel and then after resting and letting the kids play with all their toys we headed over to my adopted Australia mom's house (Joanne) and hung out with her family for Christmas games and dinner. She is the one that made Kiley the "Welcome Aussie" cake. I need to get pic's of her and her family. She is one of the most amazing people I've met!
• Plenty of Costco Runs...
THEN... if that wasn't enough we used our WorldMark Timeshare for the last few days of  her stay to enjoy Sydney and all of the summer festivities happening there right now. We LOVE our timeshare there. It is only a couple blocks away from Darling Harbour and once we get there we never have to drive. We can walk everywhere we need to go. Kiley and I stayed up really late the night before and made food for the whole week so that we didn't have to buy food for every meal because it's too expensive! You already have to pay $30-$40/day to park. So, making food is the way to go if you have a kitchen when you get there.

• Day 1: 
• Detour to IFly tree top walk on the way to Sydney
• Day 2: 
• Maddam Tussauds Wax Museum
• Water taxi over to P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney (which is actually the Taronga Zoo)
• Water taxi over to the Sydney Opera House for the walk through tour
• Watched Finding Nemo back at the hotel room! P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney!
• Day 3: 
• Darling Harbour Aquarium
• Sydney Wild Life Park
• Sydney Tower Eye
• As we were walking to the Sydney Tower Eye, there was an 'Abbie' on the street playing his didgeridoo. Tate got really into it and almost fell over a couple times. I wish I would've gotten a shot of all the people that were watching him because they were all pointing and laughing at how cute he was.


• Day 4: 
• Last Day souvenir shopping and off to the airport

I'm so glad that Kiley got to come stay with us. There is no way we could have fit this trip in with any time less than the month she was here. I feel like we had some good sister bonding and got to know each other better. GOOD TIMES KI!

And last, here are some highlight pic's of Kiley's visit (in no particular order):

Canberra International Zoo & Aquarium
This was the best part of the zoo! There is a section you can go in and pet the kangaroos and wallaby's and there are emu's walking around. Well these two creepy emu's kept walking right by us and it started to freak us out a little. One emu wouldn't leave Tate alone and he was screaming and crying and it even pecked at his head (I don't think it actually touched him though)! We were laughing so hard and I was searching for my camera and Tate had this look of abandonment on his face when I didn't help him. I felt bad because he was terrified but I couldn't pass up the moment. He took cover in the stroller as you can see.

Teagan's 4th Birthday Party
Teagan is WAY into Angry Birds. I'm regretting an Angry Birds Family Home Evening I did previously because Teagan is HOOKED! We have had to start limiting the time on the Ipad now so that he isn't a gamer junkie at the age of 4. Naturally he wanted an Angry Birds birthday. I was so dang busy keeping up with the birthday party that I didn't really get any pictures. Everything we have was taken on Jeremy's phone. Luckily we have one little video of the birthday boy blowing out his candles. Listen to what he says he wishes for. It makes me smile. :) ...and yes, I painted the Angry Bird mural in the back ground - Not too shabby for some paints on a box.

I wanted to do something he will never be able to do in Utah for his birthday which is have a water fight outside in December. So, that is what we did. We had games, and face painting, made pizza, pigs in a blanket along with Australian Ferry Bread, popcorn, Cheezels, and the cutest cupcake/cake's in an ice cream cone with an Angry Bird marshmallow. We blew up millions of balloons to put on the ceiling, streamers hanging everywhere and blew up 2 swimming pools and 4 Angry Birds inner tubes (which made us blue in the face by the time we were done). Teagan said it was his most favorite birthday EVER and he had tons of fun!

Sydney Opera House

Bateman's Bay
Look how cool this is. We saw a bunch of blue bottle jelly fish (also known as Portuguese Man-of-War)  and picked them up with the boys sand castle toys. We were SOOOOO lucky that no one got stung by them because they were all over the place.

Maddam Taussad's Wax Museum
Darling Harbor, Sydney
Yes, we are all a little nutso!

 

IFLY


Black Mountain/ Telstra Tower
Canberra, ACT


Sydney Wildlife Park
Darling Harbor
Koalas and Crocodiles, Oh My!

Here is a little video clip of the crocodile. I personally think the croc is fascinating in person.

And here is a video of a kookaburra. It let us get so close to it, we could've touched it. I was surprised it didn't try and fly away, but it didn't move at all. It's funny... Jeremy keeps telling the bird to sing and Teagan must think that he is asking HIM to do it. So, Teagan is quietly singing in the background. lol
NASA Satellite Station
NSW

John Knight Memorial Park
Canberra, ACT
Spent a nice, relaxing day with a picnic and feeding the ducks at the JKM park.

Australian Parliament Building
Aboriginal Embassy = trailer house and tents pitched out in the front with a white board that said they were closed for the day.

Kangaroo Field

Christmas Day
Daddy & Tate drawing on each other with the new markers they got to color their new castle.
Pic of Santa in our living room and the toys he left!

This is something we tried to do but they were closed for the holidays. I REALLY, REALLY want to go to the Blue Mountains soon (Click the Blue Mountains link). I've seen the Blue Mountains in tons of National Geographic stuff and it is amazing and beautiful.

We also really wanted to go to the Sydney Temple but didn't have time to.

If you made it through this far, I DARE you to fit this many activities in three weeks instead of four! :)